Because that’s where we are. Right in the middle, just before everything explodes. Mueller’s reportedly closing in on Don Jr. and just got a new boss who wants to ax him in the wake of Sessions being fired. The House is about to go on full attack mode, and in the meantime the current House is going to be hyperactive in the lame duck. And it just dropped that Trump’s decision to cancel DACA was ruled unlawful, which is going to make him explode.

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Further Florida elections news, the senate race margin is now down to 17,344.

Meantime, the governor race margin is now down 38,515. Importantly, that is under a 0.5% margin, which means it'll get an automatic recount as well.

Also, in the Florida Agriculture Commissioner Race, where Democrat Nikki Fried had been running ahead of both Nelson and Gillum, she's actually taken the lead for now, with 583 votes.

This legitimately might not be over yet.

ETA: The margin in Nelson's (and Fried's) race is currently under 0.25%, which means not only a machine recount (which triggers at 0.5%), but a hand recount as well. Is everyone ready for the 2018 version of hanging chads?

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There's a huge undervote in Broward County--to the tune of 25,541 votes.

That makes me wonder if one scanning machine simply was mechanically failing to read that corner of the ballot and as soon as the ballots are machine recounted absent that machine, all the votes will be correctly recorded. Nothing nefarious, just a bug like at the beginning of Brazil... oh wait...

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That makes me wonder if one scanning machine simply was mechanically failing to read that corner of the ballot and as soon as the ballots are machine recounted absent that machine, all the votes will be correctly recorded. Nothing nefarious, just a bug like at the beginning of Brazil... oh wait...

That's exactly what Nelson's lawyer is claiming they think happened. If it is, the hand recount should catch it. In the mean time though, expect the lawsuits to begin immediately.

Although before we even get to that point, there's some number of mail-in ballots that Broward (and potentially other counties) still have to count for the first time. And Broward has not made any statement about how many might be left.

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That's exactly what Nelson's lawyer is claiming they think happened. If it is, the hand recount should catch it. In the mean time though, expect the lawsuits to begin immediately.

Although before we even get to that point, there's some number of mail-in ballots that Broward (and potentially other counties) still have to count for the first time. And Broward has not made any statement about how many might be left.

Why is it always Broward?

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I woke up in disgust over another mass shooting and refuse to get numb over this. I do not think I have solid idea either in matters of gun or mental health yet do not think in anyway its excuse to continue with nothing while inane things like "Only a good guy with a gun can stop a bad guy with a gun" or "we need arm guards in..." are stated about. My heart goes out to all there.

With that, Florida being Florida in now both the Senate and Governor is oddly comforting.

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Is Donald Trump a world-historical figure and the embodiment of the world spirit?

So esteemed a pundit as the chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times certainly thinks so. Just as Hegel recognized Bonaparte after Jena as the great man of the age, the world spirit on horseback, so Gideon Rachman contends that Trump represents the ensoulment of the current zeitgeist.

Progressives may wail but if history is a rational process, and teleologically seeks its end in the achievement of rational freedom, Trump may very well represent the synthesis to the progressive antithesis. His orange luminance bathes the United States from shining sea to shining sea and his triumphs have dealt stinging blows to progressivism across the globe.

Now, if we are going to let Hegel illuminate the world-historical role of Trump for us we have to understand something of the progress of Geist hitherto. In bygone ages there was no such thing as the rational conscience and the inhabitants of the ancient nations of the fertile crescent perceived little distinction between the dictates of nature and the internal promptings of the moral sense.

In the Hellenic age the independent city states developed the idea of free individuality. Yet this freedom was far from complete because the free man, although an individual centre of ethical force lived unreflectively for the particular, i.e. the city state and did not universalise the conclusions of conscience to the world as a whole.

Under the empire the free individual was truly born, deracinated from the confines of the city state but still unable to order the world according to universal ethical principles on account of the tyranny then prevailing. The stoic retreated into himself and the luminaries of the Christian world were alienated from themselves, in thought bestowing the most distinguished aspects of man on the spirit dwelling beyond creation.

At length the advance of Geist approached such a stage where custom and tradition were cast off, and every class, caste, hierarchy and institution was held up to the scrutinising glare of reason’s bright light. Yet the great doyens of reason overreached and blood flowed in rivers through the streets. Opposing forces gathered but after the great conflagrations of the twentieth century only two powers, embodying two spirits of freedom, remained.

Both came to self-consciousness through their antagonism but as they sought to dominate the other, so too they desired the other. The chiliastic hope that the lesser brought down from heaven and bestowed on earth in the struggle of castes, the greater, the embers of its former fervour dimming as reason advanced, sought in self abnegation and the universalisation of its civilisation. Upon the collapse of its rival the remaining civilisation allowed the spirits of deluded freedom to erupt in full lustre.

Now, as Hegel saw, reason is both universal and particular. Universal because it must develop to encompass the whole of the objectified world and because it represents the being of Geist in all of us, but also particular because it must be embodied individually. He understood that the unique genius of Christianity was to instantiate the universal in the particular; man’s thirst for the absolute and the recognition it can only be met in the particular find their embodiment in the Incarnation.

The individual conscience, which gains freedom through structuring the world according to reason, desires its dictates to be universal. In this respect it represents an unquestionable advance on the old Hellenic ideal. Yet the antithesis constructed by this surviving power represents the annihilation of the particular and the unquestioning embrace of the universal.

Rational freedom must overcome every constraint, overawing and eliminating all the old distinctions leaving only the individual, separated from all previously assigned senses of identity to chart an unburdened course through the world.

To this is added another element, as the surviving consciousness gathers into itself the idea of an original sin, assigns to it a different provenance and perpetrator, and from it constructs its new earthly creed. It sees no reason why it should encompass the whole globe, why its insights are not universal and why the particular will not, in the fullness of time, fall before it and a millennium of multifaceted homogeneity dawn.

It is to this antithesis that Trump, like Moses descending from the mountain, restores the particular and completes the synthesis. The antithesis will not stand, its universalising ambitions, and its millenarian sense of history are irredeemably false. In the creative destruction of the Trump administration, and its effects throughout the globe, Geist will march onwards and rational freedom will harmonise with the claims both of the universal and the particular.

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Is Donald Trump a world-historical figure and the embodiment of the world spirit?

So esteemed a pundit as the chief foreign affairs commentator of the Financial Times certainly thinks so. Just as Hegel recognized Bonaparte after Jena as the great man of the age, the world spirit on horseback, so Gideon Rachman contends that Trump represents the ensoulment of the current zeitgeist.

Progressives may wail but if history is a rational process, and teleologically seeks its end in the achievement of rational freedom, Trump may very well represent the synthesis to the progressive antithesis. His orange luminance bathes the United States from shining sea to shining sea and his triumphs have dealt stinging blows to progressivism across the globe.

Now, if we are going to let Hegel illuminate the world-historical role of Trump for us we have to understand something of the progress of Geist hitherto. In bygone ages there was no such thing as the rational conscience and the inhabitants of the ancient nations of the fertile crescent perceived little distinction between the dictates of nature and the internal promptings of the moral sense.

In the Hellenic age the independent city states developed the idea of free individuality. Yet this freedom was far from complete because the free man, although an individual centre of ethical force lived unreflectively for the particular, i.e. the city state and did not universalise the conclusions of conscience to the world as a whole.

Under the empire the free individual was truly born, deracinated from the confines of the city state but still unable to order the world according to universal ethical principles on account of the tyranny then prevailing. The stoic retreated into himself and the luminaries of the Christian world were alienated from themselves, in thought bestowing the most distinguished aspects of man on the spirit dwelling beyond creation.

At length the advance of Geist approached such a stage where custom and tradition were cast off, and every class, caste, hierarchy and institution was held up to the scrutinising glare of reason’s bright light. Yet the great doyens of reason overreached and blood flowed in rivers through the streets. Opposing forces gathered but after the great conflagrations of the twentieth century only two powers, embodying two spirits of freedom, remained.

Both came to self-consciousness through their antagonism but as they sought to dominate the other, so too they desired the other. The chiliastic hope that the lesser brought down from heaven and bestowed on earth in the struggle of castes, the greater, the embers of its former fervour dimming as reason advanced, sought in self abnegation and the universalisation of its civilisation. Upon the collapse of its rival the remaining civilisation allowed the spirits of deluded freedom to erupt in full lustre.

Now, as Hegel saw, reason is both universal and particular. Universal because it must develop to encompass the whole of the objectified world and because it represents the being of Geist in all of us, but also particular because it must be embodied individually. He understood that the unique genius of Christianity was to instantiate the universal in the particular; man’s thirst for the absolute and the recognition it can only be met in the particular find their embodiment in the Incarnation.

The individual conscience, which gains freedom through structuring the world according to reason, desires its dictates to be universal. In this respect it represents an unquestionable advance on the old Hellenic ideal. Yet the antithesis constructed by this surviving power represents the annihilation of the particular and the unquestioning embrace of the universal.

Rational freedom must overcome every constraint, overawing and eliminating all the old distinctions leaving only the individual, separated from all previously assigned senses of identity to chart an unburdened course through the world.

To this is added another element, as the surviving consciousness gathers into itself the idea of an original sin, assigns to it a different provenance and perpetrator, and from it constructs its new earthly creed. It sees no reason why it should encompass the whole globe, why its insights are not universal and why the particular will not, in the fullness of time, fall before it and a millennium of multifaceted homogeneity dawn.

It is to this antithesis that Trump, like Moses descending from the mountain, restores the particular and completes the synthesis. The antithesis will not stand, its universalising ambitions, and its millenarian sense of history are irredeemably false. In the creative destruction of the Trump administration, and its effects throughout the globe, Geist will march onwards and rational freedom will harmonise with the claims both of the universal and the particular.

Mwahahahahaha... Thank you for bringing us a bit of laughter in these sad times.